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Chinese intellectual of the Ming dynasty

Xu Guangqi is the pinyin romanization of the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation of Xu's Chinese name. His name is written Hsü Kuang ch‘i using the Wade–Giles system. His courtesy name was Zixian and his penname was Xuanhu. In the Jesuits' records, it is the last which is used as his Chinese name, in the form "Siù Hsven Hú". At his conversion, he adopted the baptismal name Paul (Paulus). In Chinese, its transcription is employed as a kind of courtesy name (i. e., Xu Baolu) and the Jesuits sometimes referred to him as "Siù Pao Lò"

Xu Guangqi was born in Shanghai in Southern Zhili's Songjiang Prefecture on April 24, 1562, under China's Ming dynasty. At the time, Shanghai was merely a small walled county seat in the old quarter around the present city's Yu Garden. His family, including an older and younger sister, lived in the Taiqing Quarter at the south end of the town. Guangqi's branch of the Xus were not related to those who had passed the imperial examinations and joined Shanghai's local gentry. About half of this would have been used to feed the family, with the rest used to supplement his income from small scale trading. By the time Guangqi was 6, the family had saved enough to send him to a local school, where a later hagiographer records him piously upbraiding his classmates when they spoke of wanting to use their education for wealth or mystical power. Instead, he supposedly advised, "None of these things is worth doing. If you want to talk about the sort of person you want to become, then it should be to establish yourself and to follow the Way. Bring order to the state and the people. Revere the orthodox and expose the heterodox. Don't waste the chance to be someone who matters in this world." The next year, he traveled to Beijing in the spring and passed its provincial exam, becoming a juren. An earlier demonstration in 1623 had gone disastrously, with an exploding cannon killing one Portuguese artillerist and three Chinese observers, but on this occasion the pieces were accepted and directed to Dengzhou (now Penglai) in Shandong. The Christian convert Ignatius Sun, a protégé of Xu's, was governor there and had also been a strong advocate of modernizing China's military. Together with CaptainTeixeira and his translator João Rodrigues, Sun used the pieces to train his troops to oppose the ongoing Manchu invasion. However, Sun's lenient treatment of a 1632 mutiny under Kong Yude and Geng Zhongming permitted them to successfully capture Dengzhou, seize the artillery, and establish an independent power base that eventually joined the Manchus. Xu's memorials for clemency were unsuccessful and Sun was court martialed and executed. Most Chinese treatments of his life and legacy, however, focus upon his desire for scientific, technological, and political progress and its effect upon Chinese development, whereas Western treatments nearly universally attach great importance to his Christian conversion and identity. He frequently cited the Xunzi and Guanzi, and made use of rewards and punishments along the lines of the Legalists, at least in relief activities. Xu Guangqi put forward the concept of a "Rich Country and Strong Army" (富國強兵), which would be adopted by Japan for its modernization in the end of the 19th century, under the name Fukoku Kyohei.

In 1607, Xu and Ricci translated the first parts of Euclid's Elements (a treatise on mathematics, geometry, and logic) into Chinese. Some Chinese scholars credit Xu as having "started China's enlightenment".

After followers of Xu and Ricci publicly predicted a solar eclipse in 1629, Xu was appointed by the Emperor as the leader of an effort to reform the Chinese calendar. The reform, which constituted the first major collaboration between scientists from Europe and from the Far East, was completed after his death and became known as the Chongzhen calendar. It's notable for systematically introducing the concepts and development of European mathematics and astronomy to China for the first time, including extensive translations and references to Euclid's Elements and the works of Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Tycho Brahe, whose Tychonic system was used its main theoretical basis.

Xu's only son was John Xu Xú Jì), whose daughter was Candida Xu (, Xú Gāndìdà; 1607–1680). A devout Christian, she was recognized as an important patron of Christianity in Jiangnan during the early Qing era. The Jesuit Philippe Couplet, who worked closely with her, composed her biography in Latin. This was published in French translation as A History of the Christian Lady of China, Candide Hiu (Histoire d'une Dame Chrétienne de la Chine, Candide Hiu) in 1688. Her son was Basil Xu, who served as an official under the Qing.